Download or read book An Archaeology of Materials written by Chantal Conneller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-03-28 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title develops a systematic approach to materials at a time when there has been a call for a greater focus on materials in material culture studies. It establishes a new perspective on the meaning and significance of materials, particularly those involved in mundane, daily usage.
Download or read book The Science and Archaeology of Materials written by Julian Henderson and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a clear and up-to-date description of how the materials were exploited, modified and manufactured in prehistoric and historic periods.
Download or read book Modern Material Culture written by Richard A. Gould and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-06-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Material Culture
Download or read book Material Evidence written by Robert Chapman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do archaeologists make effective use of physical traces and material culture as repositories of evidence? Material Evidence takes a resolutely case-based approach to this question, exploring instances of exemplary practice, key challenges, instructive failures, and innovative developments in the use of archaeological data as evidence. The goal is to bring to the surface the wisdom of practice, teasing out norms of archaeological reasoning from evidence. Archaeologists make compelling use of an enormously diverse range of material evidence, from garbage dumps to monuments, from finely crafted artifacts rich with cultural significance to the detritus of everyday life and the inadvertent transformation of landscapes over the long term. Each contributor to Material Evidence identifies a particular type of evidence with which they grapple and considers, with reference to concrete examples, how archaeologists construct evidential claims, critically assess them, and bring them to bear on pivotal questions about the cultural past. Historians, cultural anthropologists, philosophers, and science studies scholars are increasingly interested in working with material things as objects of inquiry and as evidence – and they acknowledge on all sides just how challenging this is. One of the central messages of the book is that close analysis of archaeological best practice can yield constructive guidelines for practice that have much to offer archaeologists and those in related fields.
Download or read book An Archaeology of Skill written by Maikel H.G. Kuijpers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-03 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material is the mother of innovation and it is through skill that innovations are brought about. This core thesis that is developed in this book identifies skill as the linchpin of – and missing link between – studies on craft, creativity, innovation, and material culture. Through a detailed study of early bronze age axes the question is tackled of what it involves to be skilled, providing an evidence based argument about levels of skill. The unique contribution of this work is that it lays out a theoretical framework and methodology through which an empirical analysis of skill is achievable. A specific chaîne opératoire for metal axes is used that compares not only what techniques were used, but also how they were applied. A large corpus of axes is compared in terms of what skills and attention were given at the different stages of their production. The ideas developed in this book are of interest to the emerging trend of ‘material thinking’ in the human and social sciences. At the same time, it looks towards and augments the development in craft-studies, recognising the many different aspects of craft in contemporary and past societies, and the particular relationship that craftspeople have with their material. Drawing together these two distinct fields of research will stimulate (re)thinking of how to integrate production with discussions of other aspects of object biographies, and how we link arguments about value to social models.
Download or read book An Archaeology of Temperature written by Scott W. Schwartz and published by . This book was released on 2021-12 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This work investigates the material culture of public temperatures in New York City. Numbers like temperature, while ubiquitous and indispensable to capitalized social relations, are often hidden away within urban infrastructures evading attention. This Archaeology of Temperature brings such numbers to light, interrogating how we construct them and how they construct us. Building on discussions in Contemporary Archaeology this book challenges the border between material and discursive culture, advocating for a novel conception of capitalism's artifacts. The artifacts examined within (temperatures) are instantaneous electric pulses, algorithmic outputs, and momentary fluctuations in mercury. The artifacts of the capitalized never sit still, operating at subatomic and solar scales. Temperatures, as numerical materials precariously straddling the colonially constructed nature-culture divide, exemplify the abstraction necessary to pursue the perpetually accelerating asymmetrical growth of wealth-a pursuit that engenders multiple environmental and economic calamities. An Archaeology of Temperature innovatively re-imagines theory and method within Contemporary Archaeology. Equally, in plummeting the depths of temperature, this book offers indispensable contributions to science studies, urban geography, semiotics, the philosophy of materiality, the history of thermodynamics, heterodox economics, performative scholarship, and queer ecocriticism"--
Download or read book The Archaeology of Art written by Andrew Meirion Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-20 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can archaeologists interpret ancient art and images if they do not treat them as symbols or signifiers of identity? Traditional approaches to the archaeology of art have borrowed from the history of art and the anthropology of art by focusing on iconography, meaning, communication and identity. This puts the archaeology of art at a disadvantage as an understanding of iconography and meaning requires a detailed knowledge of historical or ethnographic context unavailable to many archaeologists. Rather than playing to archaeology’s weaknesses, the authors argue that an archaeology of art should instead play to archaeology’s strength: the material character of archaeological evidence. Using case studies - examining rock art, figurines, beadwork, murals, coffin decorations, sculpture and architecture from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and north Africa -the authors develop an understanding of the affective and effective nature of ancient art and imagery. An analysis of a series of material-based practices, from gesture and improvisation to miniaturisation and gigantism, assembly and disassembly and the use of distinctions in colour enable key concepts, such as style and meaning, to be re-imagined as affective practices. Recasting the archaeology of art as the study of affects offers a new prospectus for the study of ancient art and imagery.
Download or read book Archaeology After Interpretation written by Benjamin Alberti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new generation of archaeologists has thrown down a challenge to post-processual theory, arguing that characterizing material symbols as arbitrary overlooks the material character and significance of artifacts. This volume showcases the significant departure from previous symbolic approaches that is underway in the discipline. It brings together key scholars advancing a variety of cutting edge approaches, each emphasizing an understanding of artifacts and materials not in terms of symbols but relationally, as a set of associations that compose people’s understanding of the world. Authors draw on a diversity of intellectual sources and case studies, paving a dynamic road ahead for archaeology as a discipline and theoretical approaches to material culture.
Download or read book An Archaeology of the Immaterial written by Victor Buchli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-08-27 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Archaeology of the Immaterial examines a highly significant but poorly understood aspect of material culture studies: the active rejection of the material world. Buchli argues that this is evident in a number of cultural projects, including anti-consumerism and asceticism, as well as other attempts to transcend material circumstances. Exploring the cultural work which can be achieved when the material is rejected, and the social effects of these ‘dematerialisations’, this book situates the way some people disengage from the world as a specific kind of physical engagement which has profound implications for our understanding of personhood and materiality. Using case studies which range widely in time over Western societies and the technologies of materialising the immaterial, from icons to the scanning tunnelling microscope and 3-D printing, Buchli addresses the significance of immateriality for our own economics, cultural perceptions, and emerging forms of social inclusion and exclusion. An Archaeology of the Immaterial is thus an important and innovative contribution to material cultural studies which demonstrates that the making of the immaterial is, like the making of the material, a profoundly powerful operation which works to exert social control and delineate the borders of the imaginable and the enfranchised.
Download or read book Material Characterization Tests for Objects of Art and Archaeology written by Nancy Odegaard and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material characterization tests for objects of art and archaeology is not confined to museum professionals. It serves as an excellent and essential companion for conservators of outdoor sculpture, monuments, and buildings. The tests are applicable to a wide range of object classes including metal, textile, leather, paper, plastics and architectural materials. In addition to presenting the detailed methodology for carrying out each tests, the authors have evaluated the effectiveness of each test in order to assist the reader in selecting the most applicable test and interpreting the results.
Download or read book Materials in Art and Archaeology Through Their Infrared Spectra written by Stamatis C. Boyatzis and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Materials in Art and Archaeology through their Infrared Spectra introduces students and professionals in archaeology, conservation, chemistry, and materials science to the world of archaeological and art materials. The infrared spectra of materials directly reflect their structures, whether amorphous or crystalline, color or colorless, polar (hydrophilic), or nonpolar (hydrophobic). Through this book, the reader is offered a top-down approach for interpreting the rich but often subtle information drawn from the infrared spectra of most materials in the above-described context and correlate them to their molecular geometry, their molecular environments, and, most importantly, their deterioration pathways that lead to their current condition.
Download or read book Archaeology History and Science written by Marcos Martinon-Torres and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a combination of historical, archaeological, and scientific data is not an uncommon research practice. Rarely found, however, is a more overt critical consideration of how these sources of information relate to each other, or explicit attempts at developing successful strategies for interdisciplinary work. The authors in this volume provide such critical perspectives, examining materials from a wide range of cultures and time periods to demonstrate the added value of combining in their research seemingly incompatible or even contradictory sources. Case studies include explorations of the symbolism of flint knives in ancient Egypt, the meaning of cuneiform glass texts, medieval metallurgical traditions, and urban archaeology at industrial sites. This volume is noteworthy, as it offers novel contributions to specific topics, as well as fundamental reflections on the problems and potentials of the interdisciplinary study of the human past.
Download or read book Archaeometallurgy Materials Science Aspects written by Andreas Hauptmann and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-21 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book successfully connects archaeology and archaeometallurgy with geoscience and metallurgy. It addresses topics concerning ore deposits, archaeological field evidence of early metal production, and basic chemical-physical principles, as well as experimental ethnographic works on a low handicraft base and artisanal metal production to help readers better understand what happened in antiquity. The book is chiefly intended for scholars and students engaged in interdisciplinary work.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies written by Dan Hicks and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-09-02 with total page 794 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an international team of experts, the Handbook makes accessible a full range of theoretical and applied approaches to the study of material culture, and the place of materiality in social theory, presenting current thinking about material culture from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, geography, and science and technology studies.
Download or read book Crusader Archaeology written by Adrian J. Boas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-04 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crusader Archaeology draws together recent excavated material culture in Israel, Cyprus, Syria and Jordan to examine what life was like for the Crusaders in their territory, and how they were influenced by their new-found neighbours. Chapters discuss: * urban and rural settlements * surveying agriculture * industry * the military * the church * public and private architecture * arts and crafts * leisure pusuits * death and burial * building techniques. This highly illustrated volume creates a wonderful portrait of the period, which will make fascinating reading for all those interested in the Middle Ages, and in particular the Crusaders.
Download or read book Material Explorations in African Archaeology written by Timothy Insoll and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How people engaged with materials such as clay or stone, why people dug features such as pits, why they decorated their bodies, or treated their dead in certain ways, were all meaningful in the African past. However, these are subjects that have been generally neglected by archaeologists working in Africa until recently. Material Explorations in African Archaeology examines materiality in African archaeology by exploring concepts of material agency and material engagement and entanglement in relation to their manifest presence in persons, animals, objects, substances, and contexts. It investigates the magnificent and complex world of past African materiality by considering a range of case studies. These include, for example, why standing stones were erected, the potential meanings of bodily alteration practices such as scarification and dental modification, and why, recurrently, Africans in the past gave ritual importance to objects, materials, and locations thought of as exotic or different. Adopting a multidisciplinary focus, the volume draws not only on archaeology but also, among other areas, ethnography and history, discussing themes such as bodies, landscape, healing and medicine, and divination, as well as concepts such as memory and biography, transformation, and metaphor and metonym.
Download or read book Archaeology written by Bj¿rnar Olsen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-11-19 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This book exhorts the reader to embrace the materiality of archaeology by recognizing how every step in the discipline’s scientific processes involves interaction with myriad physical artifacts, ranging from the camel-hair brush to profile drawings to virtual reality imaging. At the same time, the reader is taken on a phenomenological journey into various pasts, immersed in the lives of peoples from other times, compelled to engage their senses with the sights, smells, and noises of the publics and places whose remains they study. This is a refreshingly original and provocative look at the meaning of the material culture that lies at the foundation of the archaeological discipline.”—Michael Brian Schiffer, author of The Material Life of Human Beings “This volume is a radical call to fundamentally rethink the ontology, profession, and practice of archaeology. The authors present a closely reasoned, epistemologically sound argument for why archaeology should be considered the discipline of things, rather than its more commonplace definition as the study of the human past through material traces. All scholars and students of archaeology will need to read and contemplate this thought-provoking book.”—Wendy Ashmore, Professor of Anthropology, UC Riverside "A broad, illuminating, and well-researched overview of theoretical problems pertaining to archaeology. The authors make a calm defense of the role of objects against tedious claims of 'fetishism.'"—Graham Harman, author of The Quadruple Object
